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Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, has embarked on finding a technology solution that will help reduce the amount of illegal fishing that happens around the world. Allen with his team is testing their SkyLight system in Gabon (and the Pacific island of Palau).

Allen is reported to be spending $40 million to develop the SkyLight system which uses satellite imagery and data-analysis to help spot and catch unlicensed fishing boats.

Earlier in the year (2017), Allen put together a team conservationists and technologists in partnership with game park managers across Afrika to use the Domain Awareness System (DAS) that his company, Vulcan, had developed to pre-empt potential threats by ivory poachers. Just like DAS, SkyLight is also deloped by Allen's Vulcan.

SkyLight will apparently take, as input, multiple data sources from satellite images, shipping records and information manually collected by officials standing on docks. It will then use machine learning software to track and predict which vessels might be operating illegally. The machine learning capabilities of the SkyLight system sound quite similar to what Vulcan has developed with DAS in the quest to stop elephant poaching.

The solution is expected to be officially available for implementation during the first half of 2018.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

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